I was the Editor-in-Chief of Home Entertainment magazine and former Technical Editor of Home Theater magazine. Now, in addition to Forbes, I write about all aspects of technology here and at CNET, TheWirecutter.com, HDGuru.com, Sound+Vision magazine, and several others. My articles have also been in or on NBCNews.com, Salon.com, Men’s Journal, Consumers Digest, Popular Photography, Robb Report and more. In my free time I travel to exotic locations and eat their food. My first novel, Undersea, was an Amazon and B&N bestseller, and can be found there, on any e-reader, and at UnderseaNovel.com. You can follow me on Twitter @TechwriterGeoff.

Prima Cinema Brings First-Run Movies To Your Home

I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of going to the movies. It seems like every time I go, someone not only “forgets” to put their phone on silent, but actually answers it. At some point, I feel my Hulk-like rage will spill over and the result will be… unpleasant.

Not to mention that at $17+ dollars per ticket, I can wait a few months and watch it on Blu-ray for basically the same amount, on a screen not much smaller, in the comfort of my own home.

Well, the Prima Cinema takes the wait out, letting you get movies at home while they’re still in the theater.

If you’re hoping for some sort of cheap, AppleApple TV-sized box to stream movies from the Internet, you’re out of luck. It’s more like the Kaleidescape movie server, in that it’s a hard drive with a lot of copy protection.

How It Works

On built-in, encrypted hard drives, up to 50 2D or 3D movies can be stored. The player itself is made in the US and is rack-mountable. The separate fingerprint scanner (you read that right), has a die-cast aluminum chassis. The player connects to your display via HDMI. Movies are automatically downloaded, but you only pay for the movies you watch.

Prima claims “better than Blu-ray” quality and “twice the sharpness of Blu-ray” which is a bit of a stretch, seeing as the resolution is 1080p/24 (same as Blu-ray). The encoded bit rate is twice that of Blu-ray (less compression) and there are more bits per color. So presuming your equipment can handle the latter, it should be a little better than BD. That said, even if it looks the same as Blu-ray, that’s still excellent.

Currently, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, Magnolia Pictures Millennium and Cinedigm offer movies on Prima. If other services are any indication (like NetflixNetflix, iTunes, GoogleGoogle Play and etc.), expect to see more studios sign on if Prima does well.

Cost(s)

If you’re expecting the Prima Cinema to be expensive, you’d be right. Just the hardware is $35,000. Each movie is $500, and you only get to watch it once. You have to be vetted by the company (you can’t just “buy one”). The fingerprint scanner makes sure it’s you watching the movie (or are at least in the room when it starts). There are even more draconian security features than the use of your digit. It’s essentially locked to your home and specific display. If you didn’t think Hollywood was paranoid about their content getting out, well, now you know.

While the upfront cost is steep, I can’t say $500 is outrageous for each viewing. After all, if you’ve got a family of 4, plus a few friends, plus drinks and snacks, a night out at the movies could easily cost over $200. A $300 premium for not having to go to the theater and being the go-to house for movie night… that doesn’t seem unreasonable. Well, not unreasonable for the type of person who could plunk down $35,000 for the hardware.

Conclusion and More Info

For the person with the ultimate home theater, this seems like a really cool addition. Being able to watch first-run movies at home is probably the dream of a lot of people. For those spending hundreds of thousands on a custom cinema in their home, what’s a $35,000 add-on to the overall bill?

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